Founding Technical Recruiter, AI Research & Engineering

About the role

Hiring is one of the highest-leverage things happening at Nuance right now. We’re building a small, exceptional team to solve hard problems in real-time multimodal AI, and the people we hire over the next year will shape the company for years to come.

We’re looking for a Technical Recruiter to own full-cycle recruiting for AI research and engineering talent. You’ll source and close candidates who have real options: researchers from leading AI labs, exceptional new PhDs, ML systems engineers, and senior engineers who have shipped at serious scale.

This is not a role for someone looking to plug into a mature recruiting machine. You’ll work directly with the founders and the team to build the machine: sourcing strategy, candidate experience, interview process, closing motion, and the operating cadence that keeps hiring moving.

What You’ll Own

• Own full-cycle recruiting for AI research and engineering roles, from sourcing through close
• Build deep, high-signal pipelines across AI labs, research universities, startups, and frontier engineering teams
• Proactively source for hard-to-fill roles, including ML researchers, multimodal modeling specialists, ML systems engineers, infrastructure leads, and research fellows
• Develop genuine relationships with candidates long before they are actively interviewing
• Run fast, thoughtful, respectful interview processes that reflect the quality and seriousness of the team
• Partner with founders and hiring managers to calibrate role requirements, interview loops, scorecards, and hiring bars
• Drive debriefs, references, offer strategy, and close plans for high-priority candidates
• Help candidates understand Nuance’s technical ambition, stage, equity story, and long-term upside
• Build the recruiting operating layer over time, including ATS hygiene, sourcing systems, pipeline reporting, interview kits, and process improvements
• Raise the talent bar while keeping the process warm, human, and candidate-centered

What We’re Looking For

• Strong full-cycle technical recruiting experience in a high-bar environment, such as an AI lab, top-tier technology company, or fast-moving technical startup
• Demonstrated success hiring ML researchers, research scientists, ML engineers, infrastructure engineers, or similarly technical talent
• A track record of sourcing and closing candidates directly, not just coordinating an existing process
• Evidence of winning competitive candidates against larger companies, stronger brands, or higher-cash offers
• An existing network in AI, ML, research, or deep technical engineering communities
• Excellent candidate judgment: you can quickly understand someone’s background, identify real signal, and separate substance from surface-level credentials
• Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to represent Nuance clearly and credibly to senior technical candidates
• High ownership, urgency, and follow-through — you treat hiring outcomes as your responsibility

What makes someone great in this role

• You are warm, curious, and genuinely interested in people. Candidates remember talking to you because they felt seen, not processed.
• You understand enough about modern AI systems to have informed conversations with researchers and engineers. You do not need to be a researcher, but you should be able to read a candidate’s background and ask thoughtful questions.
• You have strong closing instincts. You know when to push, when to listen, when to involve a founder, and how to build conviction over time.
• You are comfortable selling an early-stage opportunity: ambiguity, equity, technical ambition, and the chance to help define a company from the ground up.
• You care about process, but you are not process-bound. You know when a tool helps, when a spreadsheet is enough, and when the right answer is to pick up the phone.
• You are energized by building the recruiting function itself, not just filling requisitions.

Bonus Points

• Prior in-house recruiting experience at a frontier AI lab, AI startup, or highly selective engineering organization
• Experience hiring PhDs, research scientists, or candidates coming out of top academic programs
• Familiarity with AI research hiring cycles, including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, lab-leaving moments, and faculty-to-industry transitions
• Experience recruiting international candidates, including visa support, relocation, and compensation normalization
• Experience building or scaling a recruiting function from early stage through Series B or beyond
• Comfort with tools such as Greenhouse, Gem, Ashby, LinkedIn Recruiter, or similar recruiting systems

Compensation

$200,000 – $300,000 base salary, plus meaningful equity. We think long-term ownership matters and structure equity accordingly.

Logistics

• Location: In-person in Seattle, five days a week — we believe in the compounding value of working shoulder-to-shoulder.
• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas (O-1, H-1B, green card) from day one.
• AI-native tooling: Do your best work with the best tools, including unlimited tokens.

Benefits

• Health: HSA plan with ~$2,000 in annual company contributions — roughly 2x what most big tech companies put in.
• Time off: 15 days of PTO plus public holidays, and we close the office for a full week at year-end.
• Food: Lunch, drinks, and snacks on us every workday — the small thing that quietly makes the day better.
• Commuter benefits: We help cover the cost of getting to the office.
• 401(k): In the works.

Nuance Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We believe diverse teams build better AI.